San Diego, California

March 21-23, 2018

Sidestep seasonal colds and flu in all the indoor spaces at the trade show this year by washing your hands frequently and adopting several other healthy habits as you present or roam the trade floor.

There’s a whole lot of sniffling going on within the giant trade show walls this year! Take control of your health and trim your time spent feeling under the weather. The more frequently you wash your hands, the lower your risk of becoming sick.

Colds and flu are caused by viruses — not bacteria — so banking on antibacterial soap as a safeguard against colds and flu won’t be effective.

What works however, is constantly supplying your healthy body with what it needs most, including adequate sleep and a constant supply of nutrients to help ensure your body can resist pathogens it encounters.

5 Ways to Avoid a Cold at IHRSA

Sneeze into your elbow. Mom was so right when she warned you to “cover your mouth!” Cold and flu germs are primarily spread via droplets released in the air when someone who is ill coughs, sneezes or talks. Avoid touching surfaces that already have major germs on them, like elliptical machine handles at the gym, or shaking hands at the show without washing them in between meetings.

Add honey. Tea or any warming and hydrating beverage can help soothe a sore throat, suppress a cough, and calm the overall commotion of a cold or flu. Honey coats the throat and relieves irritation while its antioxidant and antimicrobial properties go to work fighting viral infections.

Eat more garlic. But not on the trade show floor! Cushing or cutting garlic cloves generates a sulfur compound known as allicin, which has antiviral, antibacterial and anti-fungal properties and is oft-credited as the star component that gives garlic its all-around stellar healing repertoire. Available only from raw garlic, choose a preparation where you add garlic at the end of cooking to tap its full medicinal power.

Stop touching your face! Thanks again, Mom. One study from the University of California, Berkeley, found that the typical person makes the hand-to-face connection an average of 16 times per hour. If you refrain from touching your eyes, nose and lips, you drastically reduce the likelihood of a virus entering your system.

Try ginseng. Canadian researchers gave 279 adults either a daily placebo or 400 milligrams a day of ginseng. Four months later, the ginseng group had contracted considerably fewer colds. University of Connecticut researchers repeated the study and arrived at the same conclusion, deeming ginseng “a safe, natural means for preventing acute respiratory illness.”

Stay-Healthy Tips 

soOlis and our sales and marketing teams hope to to see you washing your hands at IHRSA’s trade show this week in San Diego, CA. Learn about how to incorporate Artificial Intelligence into your health and fitness business, too.

Let’s face it: An attractive lean body is good for your libido and your energy level.

Couples That Sweat Together, Stay Together

Firm up, gain confidence and engage with your partner by performing popular activities together – both in and out of the gym. Try yoga and Body Pump class together, or tennis doubles and lifting weights at home.

Even if you live in a multi-family unit or a small apartment, be active together. Maybe book a couples’ massage or a ski lesson – we’d love to hear about your Valentine’s Day Couples Workouts.

Exercise, Sex and Your Brain

When you moderately exercise, the release of endorphins – those feel-good hormones or feelings of pleasure that are created and released in your brain – help create the surefire recipe for a superior love life.

Exercise produces chemicals in the brain that evoke feelings of happiness, reduce stress, and also increase arousal. Several studies show that men and women who exercise together regularly do report better (and more frequent) sex with their partners.

Maybe take a dance class together or join a gym and share a personal trainer. Go easy, but go together as a couple who might move mountains – together.

One of the best things about exercising at the gym or using home exercise equipment side-by-side is that you really do not have to be performing the same activities to get the physical jolt of being together. You do not have to be have to be at the same fitness level to participate in effective couples workouts, according to studies.

We asked some of our favorite exercise experts for their ideas on how to workout as a couple for Valentine’s Day, and received awesome suggestions on how to make each others’ hearts race!

• Try a fitness skill neither one of you has dared to try yet

• Create the ultimate home gym and meet for exercise dates

• Purchase a special personal training package for two

• Be open-minded and keep your partner’s needs (goals, comfort level) in mind

Have no fear, happy couples. Even exercising side-by-side or coming together for the last 15 minutes of stretching may potentially increase your attractiveness and commitment to each other.

Valentine’s Day Workouts That Really Work

Firm up, gain confidence and engage with your partner by performing popular activities together, both in and out of the gym. From yoga and Body Pump classes to doubles tennis and snowshoe excursions, sweating together brings you closer. Research proves it.

Remember this Valentine’s Day, working out as a team might include your whole family, office mates, parents and best friends. When winter hibernation mode kicks in, you’ll need support from your workout buddies to get moving again.

Couples workouts don’t have to just come once a year. Working out with your romantic partner can benefit your body weight, self-esteem and your relationship. The couple that plays together stays together.

Set up a new home gym together for Valentine’s Day; there are many exercise options for working up a sweat together. Now, grab your honey and go for a hike.

Ask soOlis sports and marketing services to help you plan and develop your future content marketing initiatives.

With that said, CrossFit is for all ages. From people of older age to children and everyone in between.  There’s ONE workout each day that is completely scalable based on your skill so while someone is squatting with 135lbs, you can squat with what your body is able to handle. Generally speaking, most CrossFitters workout three days on with one day off. In those workouts, you’re giving your workout your best effort because typically, CrossFitters are rewarded for finishing their workout in the least amount of time.

Because you are trying to finish your workout the quickest, CrossFit provides a supportive, yet competitive atmosphere, so it’s no surprise that CrossFit has a cult-like following. Arguably, because of the competitive nature, an amateur could push their body past their point and cause harm. This is where the support of CrossFit comes in because other CrossFitters and coaches are there to help you slow yourself down if you’re not ready.

So can you do CrossFit workouts at home? Yes! Most CrossFit gyms put their WOD (workout of the day) on their website or Facebook page so you can easily follow it at home should you have the necessary equipment. However, be careful that while you can workout at home, it may not smart to if you’re just starting out. The support provided in CrossFit gyms is lacking at home if you’re by yourself. That means, no one is there to spot you or help you take a step back to breathe when you need it.

If you’re interested in joining CrossFit but are unsure where to start, check your local gym. By going to a local gym, you will be able to meet up with certified coaches who will be more than happy to answer any and all questions you may have. Who knows, maybe they’ll even be able to offer you free tours or classes to help you get a feel of the gym. Either way, don’t count out CrossFit until you’ve experienced it yourself!

Insane Home workout Videos

Coordination, Agility, Speed and Reaction all center around a person’s “Movement Vocabulary”.  Precisely like expanding your vocabulary of words, you expand your body’s “movement vocabulary” by being exposed to a wide array of biomechanical actions, using them in multiple planes of motion and under different stresses (such as against resistance and at different speeds of motion).  The three  components of “moving” the body are the nerves that convey what to do, the muscles that respond to the nerves and the bones that the muscles move.  As someone becomes more proficient in a motor pattern, the nerves, muscles and bones become better “coordinated”. 

Agility is “coordination” that’s used spontaneously or under chaotic situations like a basketball game or perhaps tripping and avoiding a fall.  It’s unplanned “coordination”.  More clearly, a lacrosse player needs coordination when he uses his stick to toss and catch rhythmically against a wall and agility to the same basic scenario in a game in an unbalanced position after spinning away from a surprise defender.

Speed is often simplified to describe how fast someone can move straight ahead.  While that is important,  speed more often needs to be applied in multiple directions, particularly laterally and rotationally.  In fact, in the vast majority of sports, an athlete averages sprints of between 5-15 yards before she/he must decelerate and somehow alter directions.  In those situations, you can only accelerate in a new direction as fast as you can put the brakes on first.  Certainly, speed can be applied similarly to all movements beyond running as well. 

Lastly, Reaction is speed applied in response to an outside stimulus like defending an opponent in a game or how efficiently and quickly you gather your balance in avoiding the earlier mentioned fall.

Someone’s Movement Vocabulary is very much like their vocabulary of words.  Some people don’t know many words but use what they have effectively.  Others know an incredible number of them but can’t speak well spontaneously or under duress.  Likewise with athletics and movement,  a person could be coordinated in a movement but not agile and could be could be “fast” but not have great coordination or reaction time.  

To optimally expand, and more importantly be able to use your verbal vocabulary, you would expose yourself to words through reading, writing, listening, conversing, speaking, taking quizzes, and even debating or arguing (as a verbal equivalent to movement under pressure in sports).  In doing so, you would be training all of the different nerves and wiring in the brain that are involved in the process.  If you only used one of those mediums to learn, you would shortchange the nerves involved only in the other processes and your results would be limited.  

The exercise equivalent would be trying to improve your movement vocabulary and how well you use by only doing yoga or limiting your training to bench press and squats.  You may get some benefits but nothing close to your potential if your training was more complete and effective!

So, to improve coordination, agility, speed, and reaction in any and all movements, you must train all of the different nerves or “propriceptors” that orchestrate movement.  There are some that only respond to changes in speed of a limb (Pacinian Corpuscles), some that only get trained near the very end range of a motion (Ruffini Endings), some that skip the brain and speak directly to muscles to move (Golgi Ligament Endings), and some that respond only to tension in the muscle tendon (Golgi Tendon Organs).  Some proprioceptors are in the capsule surrounding each joint, some are in the ligaments, and of course certain ones are in the muscles themselves.  Now your can see how only doing a limited scope of movements or training styles could dramatically restrict your improvements!  It would physiologically be boring to your body (and probably your mind too!!).

Proper training should improve your coordination by exposing your proprioceptors, the muscles they command, and the bones and joints that get moved, to a wide variety of motor patterns.  To get more agile, you would do those patterns under different circumstances…sometimes against resistance, sometimes at faster and slower speeds, sometimes when you’re fresh and strong, and sometimes when you’re tired.  To get faster, you’ll train in a multitude of directions and improve your “brakes” as well as your “gas pedal”.  And you’ll get more reactive because your proprioceptors and their muscles will trained predictably at first and progressed to spontaneous,  chaotic drills and exercises that more closely resemble how you have respond in athletic contests. 

The best resource that we’ve found for more background and applications of these concepts for the fitness professional and for the average exerciser is the educational information available online and dvds from the Gray Institute in Adrian, Michigan (www.grayinstitute.com).